F1rst Wrestling: Enter Sandman!

It appears that the recent, critically lauded film The Wrestler is not just providing bad-boy actor/failed boxer Mickey Rourke's career with a much-needed rebound, it might even be rejuvenating the careers of real-life fading professional wrestling stars. F1rst Wrestling, normally a collective of fun-loving amateurs, will welcome two former big names in the world of ECW and WWF. First, there's Jerry Lynn, the local boy who found success in just about every major national wrestling organization in the past 15 years (ECW, WWF, WCW, TNA) while earning a reputation for getting tangled in lengthy feuds with his fellow competitors. Then there's five-time ECW champion the Sandman. Although he was a household name among pubescent boys in the 1990s, the Sandman has mostly worked with small bands of traveling wrestlers lately and is perhaps best known presently for a recent run-in with the law: This summer while at a party at a restaurant in Yonkers, New York, the drunk Sandman allegedly picked a fight with the restaurant's owner, who smashed a bottle in the wrestler's face. A SWAT team was called in, cops approached with guns drawn, and eventually the bloodied Sandman was carted off to jail and charged with assault. In addition to the high drama promised by the former headliners, F1rst will also present its usual complement of local 'rasslers grappling in the ring. 18+.
Fri., Jan. 9, 8 p.m., 2009